Economy

The U.S. Senate continued nonstop debate on its major policy and budget bill Monday, as provisions affecting Alaska continued to be hotly debated.

Senators are advancing toward a vote expected as soon as Monday night, with some attempting to sway the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Murkowski is critical to the vote, because there are 53 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, and 50 are needed to pass the bill — dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump.

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tom Tillis of North Carolina have indicated that they will vote against it. If Murkowski were to join them in opposition, it would leave Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor.

If one other Republican were to also vote no, the bill would fail.

Senators are rushing to finish work ahead of the Fourth of July, an informal deadline preferred by the president.

In order to partially pay for tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, the bill proposes significant cuts to Medicaid spending and changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.

Roughly 1 in 3 Alaskans receives health care through Medicaid, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank opposed to the big bill, estimated that 35,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if the bill passes.

Republicans proposed $6.7 billion in additional Medicaid spending for Alaska to offset some of those cuts, but over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that change violated the rules of the budget procedure being used to advance the bill.

Large numbers of Alaskans receive SNAP food aid from the federal government, and the bill would require states to pay for a share of that aid, which is currently fully funded by the federal government.

Alaska, which has repeatedly been scolded by the federal government for mistakes managing SNAP, would be required to pay as much as $37 million per year to keep food aid steady, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.

Republican senators inserted a provision into the bill that would have temporarily exempted Alaska and Hawaii from having to pay into the program, but on Monday, the Senate parliamentarian seemed likely to nix that benefit as well.

In a weekend opinion column published in the New York Times, Alaska Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, and Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, urged Congress to reject the bill, saying it would be bad for Alaska. By phone on Monday, Giessel said her view had not changed since that column was published.

Other parts of the bill, geared toward Alaska, remained intact: a new tax exemption for Community Development Quota fishing groups and an increase in a federal tax deduction for Alaska whaling captains.

The bill contains more than $7 billion for Coast Guard icebreakers and $300 million to homeport a newly purchased civilian icebreaker commissioned into Coast Guard service. That icebreaker is slated to be homeported in Juneau.

On Monday, Murkowski was working to amend a section of the bill that threatens to deter low-cost solar and wind power projects that could reduce energy costs in Alaska.

Currently, federal law provides tax credits that incentivize those projects, but the new bill would eliminate those credits.

In addition, as of Monday afternoon, the bill contained a new excise tax on solar and energy projects placed into service after 2027 if they use parts from China and other prohibited foreign countries.

Almost all solar and wind projects use Chinese components because of their low cost and high quality.

Murkowski was seeking a gradual phaseout of those tax credits by allowing projects to collect them as long as they begin construction by 2027.

The bill would have significant effects on oil and gas drilling in Alaska. It mandates four new oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and it requires other sales in Cook Inlet and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Seventy percent of rental and royalty payments from those sales would go to the state of Alaska, starting in 2034, up from 50 percent currently.

That’s down from a proposed share of 90%, which was in an earlier Senate version of the bill.

The revenue sharing is particularly important for the state because a growing proportion of North Slope oil production is coming from federal land, rather than state land, and most promising new oil finds in the North Slope are on federal land.

An earlier version of the bill proposed to ban states for 10 years from passing laws restricting AI computer software development. That’s now down to five years and has multiple exceptions.

In the Alaska Legislature, Anchorage Reps. Alyse Galvin and Andrew Gray had issued a statement asking the Senate to reconsider the 10-year ban.

A provision advancing development of the Ambler Road was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian, and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has withdrawn a proposal to sell large amounts of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land.

Overall, independent analysts have found, the tax cuts within the bill will bring increased financial benefits for the wealthiest Alaskans, while the poorest Alaskans will be left worse off because their tax cuts do not equal the cost of lost federal benefits and services.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a Sunday estimate that the bill will increase the federal debt by more than $3.2 trillion over 10 years.

If the bill advances through the Senate, it will be subject to a vote in the House, where lawmakers passed a different version earlier this year.

That vote could come before the Fourth of July holiday.

Huna Totem Corporation shareholders adopted open enrollment last week at the village corporation’s annual meeting. That means that lineal descendants of original shareholders can now enroll and receive their own shares in the corporation. 

The vote wasn’t close — 71% of voters approved opening enrollment to descendants.

“It’s a recognition that we’ve got a future generation of leaders that are ready to come in and put their fingerprints on the future of not only the company, but of our culture and our heritage,” said Huna Totem CEO Russell Dick. 

He said the board discussed opening enrollment for decades. 

“They just said, ‘Look, this is time to get this done.’ It’s been 50 years of ANCSA, and it’s time for us to recognize the future generation.”

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA, passed in 1971, creating the Alaska Native corporation system. It limited shareholders to those born before it became law — for Huna Totem, that was roughly 1,650 people. 

Until now, those original shareholders could gift shares to their family members or leave them to their descendants in their will. But often, their shares would be divided among multiple children, leaving younger generations with unequal shares to their parents and grandparents, Dick said.

“And for us to be able to come out and say, ‘you are a regular shareholder of this company, here’s what that means: you are the next generation of leaders for Huna Totem Corporation, the community of Hoonah,’ I think it’s a huge, huge thing,” he said.

Each descendant who enrolls will receive 100 shares, the same number as the original shareholders. Huna Totem did a study to see how many people qualify, and it estimated that 1,540 descendants of original Huna Totem shareholders are eligible.

Sealaska  — Southeast Alaska’s regional Alaska Native corporation — opened enrollment to descendants in 2007, and removed its blood quantum requirement that limited the enrollment of people with mixed heritage in 2022. Huna Totem may be the first village corporation in Southeast Alaska to open enrollment. 

Several corporations throughout Alaska have made similar moves in recent years. 

A cargo ship that caught fire off the Western Aleutians sank Monday morning amid salvage operations in the North Pacific Ocean.

The 600-foot Morning Midas was carrying thousands of vehicles when it began to burn around June 3, near Adak Island. The fire burned for about two weeks before officials reported it was out.

According to the ship’s manager, Zodiac Maritime, the damaged vessel went down Monday morning after taking on water in heavy weather.

Earlier this month, Zodiac said a tug with long-distance towing capabilities was on its way to the ship, but the company didn’t say when the tug was coming or where they planned to tow it.

The Liberia-flagged ship was on its way to Mexico when the fire broke out. A United States Coast Guard cutter and aircraft crews responded to the fire, and all of the cargo ship’s crew members were evacuated safely.

The vessel was carrying 3,000 vehicles, about 800 of which were either partly or fully electric.

The Morning Midas was 360 nautical miles from shore in international waters when it sank. Zodiac Maritime said in a Tuesday morning statement that Resolve Marine — an international salvage and response company with a facility in Dutch Harbor — has two salvage tugs on location.

Zodiac representatives said because the ship was so far from land, there was no realistic way to save anything on board.

The salvage company will remain on site with pollution control equipment to monitor the situation. Another specialized pollution response vessel is also on the way.

“We remain in close coordination with Resolve Marine and the United States Coast Guard, and we extend our sincere thanks for their professionalism, swift response, and continued collaboration,” Zodiac Maritime said in a Tuesday statement.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to rescind the Roadless Rule yesterday, aligning with President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this year to end a ban on constructing roads in undeveloped areas of the Tongass National Forest in order to stimulate more logging in the region.

The Roadless Rule has flip-flopped multiple times since it was established to protect undeveloped lands in 2001. It was rolled back during Trump’s first term before being reinstated by former President Joe Biden. 

Mike Jones is the Tribal President for the Organized Village of Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island, an area of the Tongass that has been logged heavily. 

“It’s the largest temperate rainforest in the world … it’s the northern lung of the planet,” Jones said of the Tongass.

He said new roads and additional logging would degrade the landscape and harm salmon streams that people rely on. 

Rolling back the Roadless Rule in Alaska hasn’t been popular in the past. When the U.S. Forest Service considered exempting the state from the federal Roadless Rule back in 2019, more than 144,000 people submitted public comments and most were opposed to opening up the Tongass to new roads. 

U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan both welcomed the rollback. 

“Repeal will not lead to environmental harm, but it will help open needed opportunities for renewable energy, forestry, mining, tourism, and more in areas that are almost completely under federal control,” Murkowski said in a statement today.

Kate Glover is an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has challenged past rescissions of the Roadless Rule on behalf of tribes, conservation nonprofits and tourism and fishing groups. 

“It’s disappointing to see the administration doing something that’s so clearly contrary to what the public is asking for and is contrary to the public interest,” Glover said. 

More than 9.2 million acres of the Tongass are inventoried as roadless areas under the rule. Nearly 330,000 acres of the 16.7 million-acre forest are considered suitable for logging, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s latest 2016 management plan. That plan is currently going through a revision. 

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment. Viking Lumber and Alcan Timber, the largest logging companies operating in the Tongass, also did not respond.

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.

A Juneau bookstore turns 50 this year. Earlier this month, it was voted one of the nation’s top 10 best independent bookstores by USA Today. 

Olga Sofia Lijó Seráns took over Hearthside Books in 2022, but she got into the book business as a librarian in Juneau nearly two decades ago after arriving from Northern Spain.  

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Olga Sofia Lijó Seráns: I love Waiting for the Weather. Eric Forrer’s memoir. It just has so much information about Alaska without being ponderous. Actually, it’s pretty funny. So it’s a great way to just have a very good look at Alaska without thinking that you are studying on it. 

My name is long. It’s Olga Sophia Lijó Seráns, and I am the owner of Hearthside Books and Toys. I was approached about buying Hearthside Books around three years ago, about this time of the year, by somebody else who thought that I could be a good match, because Hearthside  had been for sale for a while, and well, nobody in this town wanted it to close. 

I’m not sure why people thought about me. I have my guesses. I’m a book person. I’ve been always very active in the community. Since I arrived in Juneau in 2007, I got my master’s in library science. I already had two degrees in similar subjects, and then I became a public librarian, and then I became librarian for the Legislative Affairs agency. 

So between that and the fact that I’m always around books, I guess it was not very strange that somebody would have thought about me. 

What brought me to Juneau in the first place was love. My then love interest invited me for a holiday in 2006 and that was it. He was definitely a love interest, but Juneau just closed the deal. 

The big surprise was bestsellers and having to be on top of those changes almost daily. So it makes it a little bit terrifying, because you’re always having to be thinking about what’s coming next and what’s going to be people’s next interest. But on the other hand, it’s also exhilarating, a lot of fun. Will that set of books that were really, really hot two weeks ago arrive in time for being still of interest when they get here?

Hearthside is turning 50 on September 19. It was open in September 19, 1975. So I wasn’t thinking about what that would mean when I initially bought the store. But it has become more and more obvious that people in Juneau consider Hearthside a legacy. 

When you have three generations of the same family coming to you and saying, “You know, my mom used to bring me to Hearthside as a kid, and now I’m bringing my own kids here too.” It kind of makes you realize how important an independent bookstore is still in a community like Juneau. 

A man was arrested twice in Juneau last month for fraud, theft and attempted escape. 

Enrico Ronquillo, 37, falsely impersonated a Californian citizen to board the Discovery Princess cruise ship in Seattle. State troopers arrested Ronquillo and charged him with false impersonation of a U.S. citizen, making and using a false document, and two counts of aggravated identity theft on May 14. 

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection in Alaska says the incident is fairly uncommon and isn’t a trending problem. 

Over his four days on the cruise ship, he allegedly made large cash withdrawals with a stolen credit card at the ship’s casino. Ronquillo is a citizen of the Philippines who legally lives in the U.S.

According to the affidavit, an officer with Customs and Border Protection discovered the alleged crimes after looking for people on the ship who may be committing credit card fraud. 

That led officers to discover that the counterfeit documents used by Ronquillo had been used illegally before. Officers also realized that Ronquillo’s appearance did not match the photograph on the identification papers. 

The officers then escorted Ronquillo off the ship for further questioning at the Customs and Border Protection office in downtown Juneau. Customs and Border Protection has had a prior history with him, according to the affidavit.

Ronquillo admitted to the scheme during questioning and said he has committed similar crimes on cruise ships before. He told officers he was working with another person in Seattle and planned to split the cash with them. According to the affidavit, he charged nearly $20,000 to a credit card.

He had also booked a flight out of the Juneau International Airport on the same day he was arrested. 

Ronquillo was released on bail a few days after he was booked at Lemon Creek Correctional Center. Court documents say Ronquillo cut off his ankle monitor and attempted to flee Juneau. But the Juneau Police Department found him at the airport. Juneau Deputy Police Chief Krag Campbell says Ronquillo had made it through TSA and was waiting to board a flight before he was arrested. 

He is currently being held at the Lemon Creek Correctional Facility. His next readiness hearing is on July 16.